21 June 2018

Do you often wish you had a great photo to illustrate a particular idea, theme, or story your writing about? Wouldn't some professional-looking photos spruce up your website? But you don't have the cash to hire a photographer?

And you wouldn't lift photos straight out of Google, would you? Confused about copyright?

Well, you don't have to worry anymore. You can have access to beautiful photos with a click of a button . . . and it's all for free.

Here are 10 of my favourite free photo download sites. All photos are free although you can show your appreciation by donating to the contributor in some cases.

1. Pixabaywww.pixabay.com This one is a favourite of mine and I visit it frequently. Put in your search term and voilà -- up come a number of photos to fit your criteria. If at first you don't succeed, try another related search term.

2. Pexelswww.pexels.com Similar to Pixabay. Includes free stock photos, profiles of their contributing photographers and even an opportunity for you to reciprocate if you choose by uploading your own photos.

3. Unsplashwww.unsplash.com Another free stock photo site with good quality photos. New photos are added daily.

4. Freeimageshttps://www.freeimages.com/ The title of this site says it all -- free images for personal or commercial use. Claims to have more than 300,000 images in its vaults.

5. Gratisographyhttps://gratisography.com/ This site claims to be "the world's quirkiest collection of free high-resolution pictures." If you can't find it anywhere else, you might find what you're looking for here.

6. Canvahttps://www.canva.com/photos/free/ Canva has been a useful time-saver when it comes to putting together flyers, social media adverts, and other forms of advertising. It also offers free stock photos. It's relatively easy to use and you can even upload your own photos for use in your own creations.

7. StockSnaphttps://stocksnap.io/ I haven't used this one yet, but it looks similar to the above. Lots of free stock photos free from copyright restrictions. New photos are added weekly.

8. PicJumbohttps://picjumbo.com/ Similar to above -- offers free stock photos for personal and business use. Also has a "premium" option which I imagine gives you access to even more beautiful photos.

9. Death to Stockhttps://deathtothestockphoto.com/ With a name like "Death to Stock" how could you resist. While not claiming to have as many photos as other sites, Death to Stock prides itself on offering photos that are a little more unusual yet human. I'll let you explore and decide for yourself.

10. Flickrhttps://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/ You may know Flickr as a useful storage site for your photos (if you didn't know that, you should). However, many of the contributors on Flickr offer their photos on a Creative Commons licence which enables you to use them free, albeit with a nod (i.e. a credit) to the photographer.

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A new addition: Pikwizardhttps://pikwizard.com Pikwizard.com and its sister site designwizard.com offer an alternative to Canva users. Here you download from a generous range of free stock photos and create your own designs for a website, business card, e-book and more. The company's HQ is based in Cork, Ireland so may appeal to our UK and European readers.

As with any site, you should be warned that it's easy to get lost looking at reams of photos. Best to know what you want and go looking for it. Pretty well all the sites offer search facilities. This is by no means an exhaustive list. A Google search for free photos will throw up many, many more sites to explore. These ten are ones I've used at one time or another, some more than others. There's more than enough here to keep you busy and supply the perfect photo for your needs.

As with all these sites, it's worth reading over their license agreements to ensure that you are downloading and using copyright-free material.

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